


you could have called me

by deancasdracohar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Tony Stark, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Touching, Past Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Past Tony Stark/Tiberius Stone, Pining Steve Rogers, Protective Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:08:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27484018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deancasdracohar/pseuds/deancasdracohar
Summary: It's not an uncommon occurrence to find Tony in the kitchen in the middle of the night, making coffee, so Steve doesn't blink twice when he walks in and that's what he sees. But Tony's different tonight. Steve soon finds out why...Wanted to do a play on that trope I love so much, "X shows up to Y's door drugged and afraid and says I didn't know where else to go...", except Tony Stark Doesn't Ask For Help style.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 88
Kudos: 389





	1. 1

When Steve walks into the kitchen, Tony’s already there.

Which, granted, maybe he should have expected. It’s two in the morning, prime coffee-time for Tony. Steve rarely sleeps, either. He should have Tony’s nighttime schedule memorized by now so that he doesn’t have to have run-ins like this.

Not that he wants to avoid Tony—he likes talking to his teammate, maybe a little too much, but they’ve been fighting recently. Today was their worst yet, and Steve can’t even remember what it was about. Some command he’d given on the field. Probably a bad one.

He’ll just have to not look at Tony, and then they don’t have to acknowledge each other’s presences. That’s fine. He can do that.

He walks around Tony, who is, as expected, fiddling with the coffee machine, and to the fridge. He doesn’t really want anything, but he’d rather be seen grabbing a late-night snack than staring out floor-to-ceiling windows at the dark sky like a character out of a Brontë novel. So he opens the fridge.

Beside him, Tony’s still fiddling with the coffee machine. It seems like he should have it down by now, Steve thinks, based on the sheer amount of coffee he drinks, but Tony’s weird about some things. Forgets basic stuff, like how many planets are in the solar system, even as he does science Steve can’t even begin to comprehend at a mile a minute.

It’s one of the things that Steve likes too much about Tony, though he’d never tell him that.

The fridge is packed. He eventually pulls out an apple—he’s not really hungry, after all—and shuts it again. Tony is still trying to turn on the coffee machine. They haven’t said a word to one another, and Steve suddenly thinks that he needs to say something, needs to say something or he’ll burst, so he says, “I’m sorry. About today. I don’t even remember what I was yelling about, but—well.” And then he very determinedly looks away from Tony and out the window.

Tony doesn’t respond for a minute, then says, “S’ fine.”

Steve winces at the shortness of the response, but. Well. He probably deserves that. “No. It’s—well, Fury put the team together as a team. I guess I have trouble remembering that sometimes, and it’s easy to get into this mode where I stop listening. It gets, well. Hard to listen. But that’s not—I’m on a team, now. And I should trust you with calls, just like you trust me.” He remembers, now, what he and Tony had been arguing about—a call Tony had made over the comms, something about him moving forward and Hawkeye falling back. He hadn’t followed it, and everything had gone to shit.

He takes a bite of his apple. It’s too loud in the silence of the room. Can Tony hear him chewing, too?

“Not a problemo, Cap,” Tony replies, followed by a clicking sound. He’s still messing with the coffee machine.

Steve can’t leave, now. He debates continuing the conversation, but Tony doesn’t seem all that interested. He considers going to the fridge again, but if he eats anything more, he won’t sleep at all tonight.

The coffee machine makes another clicking sound and he says, “What’re you doing over there, taking it apart?”

It’s meant to sound sort of half-joking, half-interested. It comes out like he’s annoyed. He nearly curses, then nearly apologizes, but Tony speaks.

“No,” he says mournfully. “Just want coffee. S’ hard.”

Which—something about Tony’s tone is strange. Steve turns around, looks at Tony for the first time, and realizes he’s wearing a suit.

Or, most of a suit. His pants are pressed, but his shirt’s unbuttoned and his tie is hung around his neck. His hair’s messy. He looks—for lack of a better word—shitfaced.

So that’s why he wasn’t interested in the conversation. Here was Steve, finally making amends, and there was Tony, drunk off his ass. Makes sense.

Steve sighs, finishes his apple, and walks over. Presses the literal one button it takes to make coffee on this machine. Tony looks up at him with a dazed smile, like he’s hung the moon.

“You should go to bed. Instead of drinking more of that,” Steve nods to the coffee machine. “It’s not going to do you any good.”

Tony’s smile fades into a frown. He teeters, then turns back around and opens the cabinet. His face is hidden by the cabinet door when he says, “Need to stay ‘wake.”

Steve sighs again. Tony does do this a lot. Stays up for days, working on some project or another, mixes alcohol and coffee in ways that no person—not even a superhuman like Steve, much less someone with a heart condition—should. Steve’s gotten used to it. But he’s pretty sure Tony was at some gala tonight, based on the suit, not in his lab, so he’s not really sure what Tony’s staying awake for.

Of course, no one on the team really likes sleeping. Nightmares are bad for almost all of them. But most of them accept sleep as something necessary. Tony usually does, too, when he’s not working on a project.

Tony pulls a mug out of the cabinet, sets it down on the counter a little too hard. The coffee machine dings, and Tony pours his mug full to the brim.

“You really should sleep,” Steve says. He’s aware that Tony won’t like that, and that it won’t help, so he’s not sure why he says it, except for the fact that it’s undeniably true. The more he looks at Tony, the worse Tony looks, even as Steve still tries determinedly to look away. He’s sweaty and pale, and his eyes are glassy. How much did he have to drink at that gala?

Tony glares at him. “M-mm. Need to stay ‘wake. Figure out what’s—what’s it.”

Steve taps his fingers on the counter.

It was hard, at first. No. It’s still hard. When he came out of the ice, the last thing he expected was to fall in love with Howard Stark’s son. And he still—he still doesn’t expect it. It hits him strangely each time he realizes, like he’s realizing for the first time. Tony will make a stupid joke, or ramble about some science thing, or be protective over Bruce in that way he always is, and Steve will think, _I’m in love with Tony Stark._

He’s known that he’s gay for a long time, and he knows Tony’s gay, too, but Tony doesn’t like him. And there’s the team to think about. So he keeps it to himself. But it’s hard, sometimes.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees Tony start to fall. He reaches out, fast, and catches him. “Hey, there, cowboy,” he says. “You okay?”

Cowboy? What the hell?

Tony takes offense at that too, apparently. “’M not a cowboy,” he protests. “ _You’re_ the cowboy. America.”

Steve takes his hand off Tony’s arm, though keeps his hands out of his pockets, ready to catch him if he falls again, which seems more than likely. Tony picks his coffee back up off the counter and drinks another long sip. He sets it back on the counter and suddenly turns to Steve with full force.

“What do I look like?” he asks, his words still slurred, but suddenly urgent. 

“You—what?” Steve manages. Pulls himself together. He still can’t quite look at Tony, like it’s forbidden or something. Intrusive. “Um. You have brown hair?”

Tony scoffs. “Stupid,” he says.

Steve blushes.

“Different. What’s different. What’s the _wrong?_ ” he stresses.

Steve thinks he knows what Tony’s getting at. “Your eyes are glassier than normal,” he says. “You’re a little pink.” He finally looks closely at Tony, closer than he’s dared to since he walked into the kitchen. “You’re—Jesus, is that blood?” he asks, because it is: there’s blood dripping from his nose. How had he not noticed before? “Tony. Your nose is bleeding.”

Tony raises his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Duh,” he says. “Unhelpful.” He sips his coffee.

Steve splutters. He’s pretty sure Tony doesn’t get nosebleeds often, though he could be wrong. It doesn’t seem to be bleeding a lot, but there is an undeniable drip of blood going from his noses straight to his upper lip. “Do you need a, a tissue, or—what happened?”

“Just a—scuffle.” Tony waves his hand, as if that explains everything. “Nothing to worry your handsome head about.” With that, he reaches up and taps Steve on the head.

“A scuffle?” Steve asks. He straightens almost without realizing it. Goes into Captain-America mode, as Bucky would say, if Bucky were here. “Did you get into a fight? Who’d you run into?” He’s pretty sure there aren’t any big players on the streets right now—it’s not like Tony ran into Loki, or anything—but he could have run into some lower-level goon, someone who’d gotten their hands on some tech they shouldn’t, or something. Maybe the gala tonight had been a cover mission? Fury would have briefed Steve on any of that.

“Just—Ty. Not,” Tony said, and waved his hand again infuriatingly. He pointed his finger at Steve’s face. “Not what you’re thinking. Not big scaries! Not bad guys. Well. Bad guy. But not your kind.”

Steve sorted through that sentence. “Ty,” he said. “Who’s Ty? Was he at the gala?”

Tony frowns. “Shouldn’t have—ugh,” he groans. “Stop with the, the questions. Too many thoughts.” His brow furrows. Steve can practically see the gears turning in his brain, but he really needs to know _who Ty is,_ and _why he hit Tony._

But he doesn’t want to press it, so he waits.

It’s not until Tony pours himself another cup of coffee that Steve talks again.

“Tony. Ty. Who is he?”

Tony blinks, looks up, as if he’d forgotten Steve was there.

“Ty? Is he here?” he asks, and Steve hears something in his voice that makes his gut clench.

Fear.

Tony blinks again. His eyes are wide. He’s looking at Steve, and Steve quickly shakes his head. “No. He’s not here,” he reassures. Tony lets out a breath of relief, and Steve’s gut clenches again. “Who is he?” he insists. He’s not sure whether he should push it, but if there’s someone out there who isn’t dealt with, who the Avengers need to worry about, then Steve needs to know.

“Ty is…Ty. Didn’t think—but he’s. I’m smarter!” he says finally, tapping on his temple. “Outsmarted him. ‘M not stupid. He can’t make me stupid.”

“He tried to make you stupid,” Steve says doubtfully. His mind is thinking up someone—scientist? Alien? Magician?—with a ray-gun to make people stupid. Which is ridiculous, but that’s what he’s imagining. “How’d he do that?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Rohi—ropehi—” he shakes his head, then says decisively, “ro-hyp-nol.” He looks at Steve as though that explained everything.

“I don’t know what that is,” Steve admits.

“Roofies,” Tony clarifies, then opens a drawer full of junk and begins to rifle through it. “I think. Could be—keta…yeah.”

Steve blinks. Looks at Tony, who seems unphased by what he’s just said. “Roofies?” he asks slowly. His heart thumps in his chest, one, two. “Like, he put something in your drink?”

“Mm,” Tony affirms.

Steve looks at Tony. At the blood dripping from his nose. At the way he’s holding himself up by leveraging himself on the counter, more leaning than standing. “So this…Ty, he drugged you. And then hit you?”

“Fought ‘m off,” Tony mumbles. He’s still leaned over the drawer of junk.

“Tony,” Steve breathes, and reaches out to hold him steady. Stops himself. “Tony, you should sit down. There’s a couch—”

Tony shakes his head. “Need to figure. What’s in—whasit’s.”

“You just spent ten minutes figuring out the coffee machine. Let’s go sit on the couch. You can do this sitting down.” Steve’s head is spinning, and now he needs to go into Captain America mode. Distressed teammate. Orders. He can handle this—panicking can come later. This is something he can handle. Tony is drugged. He needs to sit.

Tony considers this. “Coffee,” he decides, stumbles over to the machine, and refills his mug. He steadies himself on the counter, frowns, and looks up at Steve. “Kay.”

Steve puts a hand under Tony’s elbow and slowly guides him to the couch, then sits on the opposite end. The last thing he needs to do right now is get in Tony’s space, make him uncomfortable. Instead, he looks at Tony.

His pupils are wide, blown out. He’s fiddling with his cuff, now, and murmuring to himself, and even as Steve watches he’s toppling slowly, one way and then the other. How is he still on his feet? Tony looks over at Steve and frowns.

“Far,” he complains.

“I want to give you space,” Steve offers, which obviously doesn’t change anything, because Tony just glares.

Steve sits closer, still a full cushion away from Tony, who pokes his knee and smiles.

Steve’s gut clenches. Captain America. Here are the things he needs to do: one, make sure Tony is safe. Two, figure out who _Ty_ is. Three, neutralize him. With as much pain as possible.

The first seems done, at least for now. Tony’s drugged, of course, but Steve’s not sure what else he can do besides wait it out and make sure Tony doesn’t choke on his own vomit if he eventually passes out. Be here, basically, and Steve can do that.

Or, there’s one more thing he can do. “Jarvis?” he asks, looking up because he forgets every single time that Jarvis isn’t in the ceiling.

“How can I help you, sir?”

“Is Tony—okay? For now?”

“Sir appears to be in a stable condition. Rest assured, I will watch his vitals.”

Alright. One done.

The second is more complicated. He’s pretty sure he knows Tony, and that’s why he’s pretty sure he knows Tony will pretend none of this happened tomorrow morning. He’ll brush off any of Steve’s questions and that will be that. Game over.

And then Ty, whoever the hell he is, will attack Tony again and it won’t end as well as this time and Steve is not going to let that happen.

No. That’s not how this is going to go down. If he wants to figure out who Ty is, that needs to happen now, even if Tony will hate him in the morning.

“Was Ty at the gala tonight?” he asks carefully. Asking straight on didn’t seem to work—fine. He can piece this together, one piece of information at a time.

Tony slumps backward on the couch, puts his hand up to his nose and holds it lightly. His head tips backward over the cushions as he says, “Yes.”

So Ty, whoever he is, has got money. Or he broke into the gala. And Tony knows him, Steve’s pretty sure, based on the familiarity of his tone. So maybe he’s a donor, or a politician. Steve’s met a bunch of them, too, the sleazy assholes who go to those galas, but he’s bad with names.

“Was Ty supposed to be there?” he asks.

Tony moves his head around in something akin to a circle. Steve’s pretty sure it’s a nod, but he can’t actually tell.

“Tony. This is important,” he says, and feels like a total jerk doing it. But this is a _now_ problem. “I need you to help me here.”

Tony groans, turns on his side. “Stupid,” he says, and gestures vaguely in Steve’s direction. “Yeah. He’s…allowed. But doesn’t,” he tries, blinks. Takes a breath. “Usually.”

“He’s a guest at these things, but doesn’t usually go?” Steve attempts.

Tony offers another sort-of-nod.

Great. So, he’s someone with money. It’s not out-of-the-question that he’s one of those rich, Bruce-Wayne-style assholes who thinks he’s going to take over the world with tech and builds himself a couple of mediocre weapons, and he went after Tony because he’s an Avenger, or another tech guy, or whatever. But that doesn’t really add up.

“Do you know him?” he asks.

Tony’s brow furrows.

“Ty,” Steve reminds.

And that was stupid, of course, because Tony’s eyes widen and his head lifts a little. “Ty?” he says. His voice is quiet and unsure, and Steve needs to punch someone again. “Here?”

“No,” Steve says, trying to keep the strain from his voice. Tony’s eyes soften again, and he slumps back. “He’s not here. He’s not here. Tony. How do you know Ty?”

Tony groans. Runs a hand over his face. “’s my ex,” he says.

Steve works through that one. Ty is Tony’s ex. He was at the gala. He drugged Tony with a date-rape drug.

Steve’s not stupid. He’s not. So he’s not sure why he asks, “What did he want?”

Tony’s unimpressed, if the long sigh he lets out is anything to go off of. Which Steve deserves. “What does he…ever,” he manages.

Steve’s knuckles are white, he notices, he’s gripping his knees in a way that would bruise if he wasn’t a superhuman. He needs to stand, to hit Ty. Step three. He needs step three.

He stands, fists clenched, and in his periphery, Tony presses backwards into the couch.

“Steve?” Tony asks. Steve freezes. “Am I…did…something wrong?” he manages.

Steve swallows. Folds his arms, then feels like that makes him look angrier, so puts his hands in his pockets instead. “No. You’re good, Tony. Don’t worry,” he says, and sits back down, still a cushion and a half away from Tony. “You’re safe,” he says, and that’s more for his own sake than Tony’s, but Tony curls up a little anyways and yawns.

Steve curls up himself, a little, folds his legs underneath him and looks at Tony. There’s still blood under his nose.

Tony didn’t even tell Steve, or call him—or Clint, or Nat, or anyone. He just fought _Ty_ off himself and then somehow made his way back to the tower. Steve feels sick.

Tony’s eyes flutter close. Steve looks out the window, then back at Tony, then away again. He picks up Tony’s coffee and drinks it. He needs to stay awake tonight. He needs to make sure Tony is safe, and he doesn’t want him to wake up alone.


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thanks for all your rly nice comments and all the kudos they make me very happy:))) 
> 
> if there are any mistakes/plot holes pls lmk!!! tysm <3

Tony wakes up and for a moment, he thinks he has actually died.

His head is aching so badly he can barely lift it. He squeezes his eyes shut, blinks. He recognizes this pain, though. The pain that only intensifies when he tries to think, that feels like someone’s stuffed his head full of cotton balls and then gone at it from the outside with a hammer.

Rohypnol. He’s had it enough times to know what it means.

Ty.

He opens his eyes. He’s lying on the couch in the living room of the communal floor. He got home. Thank god. He shuts his eyes again and groans. He barely—just barely—remembers fighting Ty off last night at the gala. The strange, close sound of his own nose crunching. The feeling of blood, slippery on his hands.

Did he call a car? No one was with him at the gala, but he's on the communal floor. Why didn’t he go to his room?

“You’re awake,” someone says from beside him.

Steve says. That was Steve’s voice.

With effort, Tony opens his eyes again and turns. Steve is sitting on the couch, back straight as a board, a good yard and a half away from him. His eyes are trained on the wall-to-ceiling windows. He looks more like a soldier now than ever.

Fuck.

In any other situation, Tony would love to wake up half-undressed on a couch next to Steve. But this…this is not good. How much does Steve know? He tries to remember whether he was at the Gala. He wasn’t, Tony’s pretty sure. No, Tony's definitely sure. Maybe he found him on the couch, or in the elevator on the way back. With any luck, Tony was asleep by the time Steve found him, and he's just annoyed that Tony passed out on the couch.

“Clearly,” Tony grunts. He wants to make a _Captain Obvious_ joke, but he can’t spare the words—every syllable he speaks squeezes his head like a lemon. He tries to stand up so he can _get away_ from the awkwardness of this situation, but his head protests and he slumps back onto the couch. He hates this feeling. Similar to a hangover, but so, so much worse. And it reminds him of Ty, an added bonus. “So are you.”

“Tony, someone—how much do you remember? From last night?” Steve says. His tone is measured, tentative.

Steve knows, then, or at least knows something. Tony’s stomach sinks.

This time, he does stand. Bright, black spots creep over his vision for a minute and he blinks, clears them. This is fine. He can handle this. He walks to the kitchen and Steve trails behind him, because of course. Freaking golden retriever. Tony wants to hate him, but he can’t.

“Tony—” Steve says.

“Let it go, Cap. It’s not a big deal," he says, and starts to make himself a cup of coffee. "What the hell is going on with the coffee machine?” he asks, to change the subject, but also because someone has fucked with it. His coffee machine. The buttons are sticking, and it looks like someone tried to unscrew the back off, unsuccessfully. With their fingernails, or something. Had Wolverine come into the apartment in the middle of the night?

“You wanted coffee last night. Tony, someone—you were drugged last night. At the gala. Do you remember that?” Steve asks again.

Yes. He remembers that. And he needs Steve to stop talking. But, more importantly: he needs coffee. Of course he was the one who unscrewed it. It seems to be working fine, regardless. He’ll fix it up later, but for now he presses the button and listens to the comforting sound of it warming up. Blinks away the darkness that keeps creeping into the edges of his vision.

“I don’t understand how this isn’t a big deal,” Steve says when Tony doesn’t respond.

Jesus. He cannot let anything go.

Tony goes into the cupboard to look for a mug, then sees one drying next to the sink. It’s his favorite, has a stupid science pun on the front. Bruce bought it for him ages ago. Did he wash it last night after using it? He can’t imagine how he would have managed that.

Steve, he realizes. Steve had washed his mug while he was passed out and then left it out carefully, on a kitchen towel, to dry.

He picks the mug up and holds it tight in his hand. His senses are still a little loopy, and he doesn’t want to drop it.

"Tony-"

“It’s just, like, a thing,” he responds, finally, and taps the mug lightly on the counter so it makes a _ding_ sound. And then immediately regrets doing that because even the quiet sound sends his head spinning.

He doesn’t look at Steve, because there’s way too much going on right now without Steve’s look of disappointment, or pity, or whatever is happening on his stupidly attractive face.

“A thing," Steve repeats. The room stills every time Steve talks, goes quiet. Even just his stupid two-word answers.

“Yes,” Tony says, slowly. This could work. If he pisses Steve off enough, or whatever, and then he’ll drop it. Give up, decide it's not worth the trouble. “A thing. You know. Taxes. Daylight savings. Mondays.”

“Your ex-boyfriend drugging and attacking you at fancy galas,” Steve adds.

Ah. So. He knows about Ty.

How much do you know, Tony wants to ask, how much did I tell you, but he needs to end this conversation fast before it creeps into _3am-sleepover-party-telling-you-my-secrets_ territory, which he clearly did enough of while under the influence.

At least he didn’t confess his undying love for Steve last night, which would be irrefutably worse. He probably would have been hit a second time in one night.

“Yes. That. Glad you’ve caught on, let’s drop it now, yeah?” he says, instead.

“Tony, has this—”

“I can handle myself,” Tony interrupts.

Because he _can_ handle himself. He fought Ty off last night, didn’t he? Or—he’s pretty sure he did. He did, because if he hadn’t…he wouldn’t be here. So he did.

And he has in the past, too. He was the one who left, after all. Too late, way too late, but he still did, packed his shit in the middle of the night and left when Ty had finally gone too far.

And six years ago, when Ty had tried to blackmail him with that stupid, godawful sex tape—well, Tony hadn’t gotten rid of that, but he’s dripping with sex tapes at this point, so. One more out there on the internet wasn’t any great loss. Ty didn’t succeed in blackmailing him, anyways.

Tony can handle himself.

The coffee machine dings. He pours himself a cup and turns to leave.

“You shouldn’t have to,” Steve says as Tony walks away. “Handle yourself. You shouldn’t have to,” he repeats.

Tony doesn’t turn around, just keeps on walking, coffee in hand, to the elevator, and faces the wall so he doesn’t have to look at Steve’s face as the doors close.

When he gets to his lab—he’s awake, now, and might as well do some damage control—he asks Jarvis to go through the event details. It was some charity gala for some neighborhood in New York that had been destroyed by a recent fight with a group of mutants. His foundation wasn’t running it. If it had, Ty wouldn’t have been on the guest list. He’s on the list for a lot of these things, though. Usually he doesn’t bother to come. Stone isn’t a big name in tech anymore—their products aren’t even as good as Apple, and that’s saying something—so Tony thinks it’s an ego thing, or something, that he doesn’t show. Why was he there this time?

He drinks his coffee and waits. His head is still killing him. Back when they were dating and Ty gave him these all the time, roofied practically all his drinks, Tony thought that this was just what alcohol _did_. God. How did he think that? (Because Ty told him, of course, but still. How did he believe that?)

“Here, sir,” Jarvis says. His voice is quiet, gentle, a blessing.

The report is…strange.

S.H.I.E.L.D. sponsored the event.

Really?

Well. That makes sense. S.H.I.E.L.D. often has to do apology events and fundraisers for this kind of thing, since people thinks it’s _their_ fault that the team knocks down a building or two while saving the literal earth. Which, okay, maybe it is, but still. Ridiculous.

And it’s not like he’s told Fury about Ty, and he’s pretty sure Nat doesn’t know, either, (though he wouldn’t put it past her), and so he can’t be upset that Ty was on the list, even if it does suck and he does plan on hacking their systems and fixing that shit immediately. Hell, people don’t even know that they _dated_ —Ty wanted to keep it secret, which should have been a red fucking flag.

What’s strange is the fact that Ty _showed_. The whole point of events like these, after all, is connections. (And fundraising, blah blah blah, but no one goes out of the goodness of their heart.) What kind of connections was he trying to get at a S.H.I.E.L.D.-sponsored event? It was practically given that everyone there was on StarkTech, and no one who had StarkTech would ever get anything from Viastone Corporation. What a downgrade.

Tony groans and draws his rolling chair up to a computer. He tries to ignore the pounding in his head the bright screen is causing as he does some quick typing. But things only get stranger when he goes into the back end of S.H.I.E.L.D. to purge Ty from any future guest lists so he _never has to see him again_. Because Ty’s name, and Ty’s company, are showing up somewhere other than guest lists.

They’re showing up in a contract.

A contract dated only two-and-a-half weeks ago. A contract cosigned by S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury.

What the hell does S.H.I.E.L.D. want with Viastone tech?

He nearly gives Fury a call, but his head is pounding and that voice will either send him over the edge or put him right to sleep. He’ll see him at their meeting later today, anyways, and give him a piece of his mind. Viastone tech. Jesus. Fury should be embarrassed.

\--

By the time 3:30 rolls around, Tony is feeling…well, not good, but slightly better. Advil and copious amounts of coffee are helping. He’s running late for the meeting, tapping his foot and looking at his watch while the elevator dings up to the top floor. Tony’s usually late, and he usually doesn’t care, but the combination of his killer headache and the lingering presence of Ty is throwing him off, making him twitchy. Like he’s sixteen again. He can almost smell Ty’s cologne in here, clean and sharp and almost citrusy, like bleach.

The elevator finally, finally shows up, and he speed-walks down the hallway. When he gets to Fury’s door, it’s shut. He gives a curtesy knock and then walks in, ready to start complaining about Viastone Corp.

Except. The head of Vistastone Corp is sitting in one of the chairs in front of Fury’s desk.

Tony briefly considers turning around, running, and never looking back. Instead, he smiles, shuts the door behind him, and sits in the other chair. “Tiberius,” he says, with a nod in Ty’s direction. He even looks at Ty. Because fucking hell. He can handle this. What’s Ty going to do to him here, right under Fury’s nose?

Something terrible, his brain supplies, but he squashes that thought.

He’s looking better than Tony is this morning, though there’s some faint bruising on his jaw and Tony thinks, with satisfaction, that it must correspond to the ache in his own knuckles. The cologne is stronger in here; he'd actually been smelling it in the elevator, but here it's in full force, overpowering. Ty smiles his movie-star smile, shark-like.

“Tony,” he says. “Great to see you again.” Pleasant. Casual, but polite.

Tony looks away. Focuses on Fury, who's not even looking at him. He can’t tell whether he’s being normal or not. He doesn't remember how to act.

“I’m glad you two have met,” Fury says lightly. “Mr. Stone here is the CEO of Viastone Corporation. I assume you know of them?”

Tony smiles. It feels wrong. He doesn’t know how to fix it.

“Yeah,” he says, looking at Fury. If he narrows his vision in a certain way, Ty's not even here. “I am in the tech field, after all. Big competitor and all that.” Vistastone Corporation is not actually a competitor. They’re _fine._ But StarkTech doesn’t _have_ competitors. Which begs the question: why is Ty here?

Ty chuckles. “You don't have to be nice, we're not much of a competitor,” he says, and something in Tony’s gut twists at the fact that they had the same thought. “Tony here has blown us all out of the water,” he confides in Fury, and gives Tony’s shoulder a friendly slap.

Tony smiles. He definitely doesn’t smile this much, usually. Maybe he should stop smiling. His cheeks hurt, actually, but his whole body feels stiff, painted on. He's not sure he can stop. He counts to three, and stops smiling. There.

“Well. Regardless, I’ve been telling Mr. Stone here about some of the…internal problems we’ve been having,” Fury continues, and at first Tony doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Internal problems? “We were thinking that we could bring in another individual. To moderate, and…” Fury keeps talking, but Tony tunes his voice out, because he knows, now, what Fury is talking about.

The fucking designs.

Okay, yeah. Tony has been…demanding, about a lot of the designs. It’s not his fault he’s a genius and wants things that _have people’s lives in their hands_ to work as best they can. It’s not his fault that people have tried to steal his designs and have used them for bad shit before, and now he’s protective over them. And, okay, sometimes that ends in him being secretive and unhelpful, from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s standpoint. They hate dealing with him. But he gives them good tech. At the end of the day, they can’t do better than him.

So now they’re bringing in Ty to watch him. Like a babysitter.

It occurs to Tony, belatedly, that Ty knew about all of this beforehand. Fury must have reached out to him and explained it already. That’s why he did what he did last night. So that Tony would be off of his game during this meeting and he would get a better business deal. That's always what it's about, isn't it?

Tony swallows. Fury’s stopped talking, now, and is looking at him expectantly. Ty accomplished his goal, apparently. Tony is thoroughly thrown off.

“Yep. Sounds good,” Tony says, and hopes he knows what he’s just agreed to. “So, what’s this going to be, I have to work with a team from Viastone?”

It’s pretty obvious to Tony, too, that Viastone is going steal his designs. He's not sure how Fury hasn't come to the same conclusion, except that Ty's best quality is his ability to talk anyone into believing anything. Or his worst quality. Anyways, Viastone will steal his designs, sooner or later. But fine. Whatever. He can lie to them, give them bad info, something like that. It’s an extra step in the creative process, but it’s doable.

Fury waves a hand, though, in response. “No, no. We’re not giving you a bunch of interns to bully, Stark," and that seems like a joke, but Tony's not sure if he's supposed to laugh, and he definitely doesn't remember how, so he doesn't. Instead, he stares hard at a stack of papers on Fury's desk. He can't even read the header. Should he be able to read that? He should be able to read that. "No," Fury continues. "You’ll do your business directly with Stone here. Meetings, working in the shop together, whatever he needs to make sure you’re on track. A sort of partner-style relationship.”

One-on-one time. With Ty. All the time.

Tony’s heart skitters to a halt. Out of the corner of his eye, Ty is looking at Fury, attentive. Polite. Kind. Tony wants to throw up. Needs to throw up.

He can handle this. He can.

“I don’t need a babysitter. I don’t agree to this,” he says, with as much confidence as he can muster. Under Ty’s gaze, the statement withers, and sounds more like a complaint. Tony swallows again. His throat is dry. His breath is catching, he needs to get that under control.

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Fury sighs. “S.H.I.E.L.D. just can’t allow for such an…unpredictable element. We’ve given you chances, Stark,” he says, as Tony tries to interrupt. “I myself have given you several warnings. This is the option, now. It’s either you agree to this, or we’ll end our contract with Stark Industries and draw one up with Viastone.”

“That’s idiotic,” Tony says, before his brain catches up to his mouth.

Ty laughs, loud and long, and Jesus fuck, Tony hates that sound. A shiver runs down his spine and he shoves his hands under his knees to keep himself from bolting.

Fury frowns. “There’s no need for that, Stark,” he says, sharply, then shoots an apologetic look to Ty. To _Ty._ Then he looks back at Tony. “So, what’ll it be?” he asks.

The thing is, Tony knows how this is going to go.

If he agrees, Ty is going to take every inch of space that Tony allows. He’s going to make Tony’s life a living hell, like Tony's sixteen again, at MIT and right under Ty's thumb, until Tony gives up and Ty gets the contract anyways. 

But if Tony says that Ty can have the contract, then his teammates are going out into the field with shitty equipment. He’s putting his teammates in danger. He’s putting his _friends_ in danger, if he gives Ty the contract. And he’s letting Ty win. He can't do that. 

So he takes a deep breath and looks right at Ty’s movie-star smile as he says, “I guess I’ll be seeing a lot more of you, partner.”

He’s not even sure he’s awake for the rest of the meeting. His head is aching and his heart is thumping and it’s all he can do to not have a full-blown panic attack right in Fury’s office, which would probably end up in him getting immediately removed from the contract. So he sits and nods and when the meeting ends, practically runs out of Fury’s office so he won’t have to share an elevator with Ty.

He’s not fast enough. Just as the doors are beginning to close, Ty works his way into the elevator like he’s in The Shining and he’s driven a hatchet through the doors. He smiles, too. Just like in the movie.

“You sure were in a rush,” he says lazily. He leans back against the wall. Tony goes to press the ground floor button. “Oh, press the button for the third floor, too,” he says. Tony presses it without thinking. Nearly curses. Sticks his hands in his pockets.

He’s close to Ty, now, but he doesn’t want to move away. Ty’s already smiling, easily, like he’s won. No need to give him anything more. This is fine. Tony can handle this.

He feels so small. He wishes he had his armor, but that’s a stupid wish. _Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off and what are you?_ A fucking sixteen-year-old, apparently. 

“I hope our little run-in last night won’t stop us from being able to work together. That really was a misunderstanding, Tony. I forgive you for hitting me, of course,” Ty concedes with a nod. “You thought you were protecting yourself.” Then he chuckles, leans forward. Tony holds himself in place. “Don’t know what you thought you needed protecting from. You know I always do what’s best for you. And Director Fury clearly knows it too.”

Tony swallows. Behind Ty’s head, the floors are clicking downward. They’re passing twelve, now, but the elevator isn’t like his. It moves at a crawl.

“God, the stories he was telling me, Tony,” Ty says, and shakes his head. “Seems like you’re really stressing everyone out over here. You never were a very good team player—but of course, we balanced each other out so well that way.”

Tony taps his foot. The tenth floor, now. Maybe someone will stop it, get in with them, but no such luck. Ty shifts closer to Tony.

“Well, Director Fury just thinks you need a push in the right direction, and I seem to remember you just take a bit of prodding to be a good listener,” Ty says, and winks. “I think we’ll work very well together, Tones. Yeah.”

They’re on the fifth floor, now. Silence hangs heavy in the air. Fourth. The elevator starts to slow to a stop at the third and Ty walks out.

As he passes, he leans over so his hand is on Tony’s lower back and lingers for a moment before smiling at him, inches from his face, and turning and walking out the elevator doors.

Tony blinks. Watches the doors close.

He needs to be in his workshop. When the elevator gets to the ground floor, he walks out as fast as he can, drives back to the tower, nearly runs over a pedestrian on the way, leaves his car with the valet. Inside the tower, he practically flies through the hallways until he’s in the workshop, and then he shuts the door, sits on the floor, and tries to breathe.


	3. 3

Steve has spent all day trying to figure out who the hell _Ty_ is. He figured it would be easy—Google exists, after all, even if he isn’t very good at it, and Tony’s famous. There should be a play-by-play breakdown of their relationship. Which is invasive and gross, but worth it if he can find Ty and make sure he never gets near Tony again.

But he can’t. At first he thinks it’s because of the nickname. He looks up lists of Tony’s exes, some Cosmo article titled _The Definitive List of Tony Stark’s Relationships,_ even tries—and fails—to ask Jarvis, who clams up, though he has that tone of voice like he wishes he could say something. He googles “Tony Stark and Tyrone dating?”, and “Tony Stark in a relationship with Tyler?”, and “Tony Stark and Tyson break-up news,” but none of those return results.

Was Tony lying?

Tony’s eyes, wide with fear, flicker in front of Steve’s vision. No, Tony wasn’t lying. They must have kept their relationship secret, then. That’s something Steve has heard about—celebrities wanting to keep things on the down low. Maybe that’s why he can’t find anything on Tony’s relationship.

He guiltily looks up _Tony Stark in a secret relationship?_ on Google, which gives him…a lot of results, actually. There’s a tall woman with shock-red hair who the Daily Mail says Tony might have dated in 2009, a short guy with a shaved head that Tony allegedly left a hotel with in 2004, and a tall blonde guy that Tony apparently was seen making out with in a club ten years back. All he can get of any of them is a blurry picture, not even a name, but he commits the smudged faces to memory. Just in case.

He sighs, puts his phone down. What the hell is he doing? This is weird. Possessive. Tony didn’t ask for this. _He never would,_ Steve’s brain supplies. _He never asks for anything._ Steve swats that thought away. It doesn’t matter _._ Tony didn’t want him involved. Even if Tony did ask for help, he would hardly ask Steve. This is none of his business.

He gets up, stretches his legs. He really should go to the gym; he has way more nervous energy than is healthy. He leaves his room and makes his way down to the fifth floor, where the gym is. Luckily, it’s empty. He hates working out in front of other people.

He hangs up one of the extra-strength punching bags. Tony designed these after Steve kept breaking through the normal ones. They work like a charm, and Steve gives it a couple of warm-up hits and then starts really going at it.

He’s not imagining that the punching bag is Ty. That would be ridiculous. Yeah. Instead, he’s thinking about the team, moving forward. They need to identify some better vantage points throughout the city that Hawkeye can use. The archer himself, of course, is perfectly okay finding them in the moment, but when Steve’s issuing orders it’s helpful for him to be able to picture where everyone is, and Hawkeye going wherever suits him best isn’t conducive to that. He’ll have to sit down with Clint, figure out which buildings are best in a pinch. Maybe Tony can even make him some sort of—Tony.

He punches harder. Shakes out the pain in his knuckles. It’s a good distraction. Because this is—this is none of his business. Tony doesn’t want him here. _It’s just, like, a thing,_ Tony had said. Fine. Tony can handle himself. He’s fucking Ironman, after all.

That doesn’t make Steve feel better, but maybe it will if he keeps repeating it over and over.

By the time he leaves the gym, he’s covered in sweat and his knuckles are raw. It feels good. He gets into the elevator, presses the button for his floor, taps his foot. He always feels weird, standing in the fancy elevator in his gym clothes, out of place, but weird is pretty much a constant feeling, this century.

“Captain Rogers, may I have a moment of your time?” Jarvis asks.

Steve’s head swings up. “What’s going on, Jarvis?” he asks. Jarvis hardly ever starts conversations with him. For a moment, he thinks that maybe he’s going to have to get suited up, there’s a threat, but no. The alert would have gone off.

“I believe Sir is experiencing some problems in his workshop,” Jarvis says.

Tony.

“What?” Steve says, his breath escaping him.

“He has an elevated heart rate and is having trouble breathing. All conditions indicate a panic attack,” Jarvis continues.

Steve knows Tony has panic attacks. He’s seen the aftermath. Tony is left shaky, pale, and gasping, though he tries his best to hide it. He’s pretty sure, though, that Jarvis is under orders to not tell anyone when it’s happening. So why is he telling Steve now? Did Tony say that he could? Steve doubts that, somehow, and that means that somehow this one is bad enough to let Jarvis override that protocol.

“Can you take me there?” Steve asks. “Now?”

“Doing so already, Captain Rogers,” Jarvis says smoothly. The elevator changes direction. 

The elevator—the fastest one in the world, as Tony reminds the team incessantly—is moving like an elephant. Steve half has a mind to pry the doors open and climb to wherever Tony is, but it’s a stupid thought. The doors open and he runs out.

The workshop door slides open without him even giving a command or code. At first, he thinks that Tony isn’t here. Then he sees a small figure sitting against the opposite wall, shaking.

“Tony,” he says quickly, and tries to slow himself as he walks over so it doesn’t look like he’s rushing an attack. At the sound of his name, Tony looks up, sees Steve, and puts his head back down again. His knees are curled up to his chest and he’s leaning over them.

Steve sits down a few feet away from Tony. He doesn’t know what to do. In the war, people had panic attacks, though that’s not what they were called. He’s helped people through a few of them. But everything’s different now—mental health and medications and studies and Steve’s sure whatever he knows is completely inadequate.

But it’s all he’s got.

“I’m just going to sit here and talk to you, okay, Tony?” he says. Tony doesn’t reply. It’s possible he didn’t hear. “I’m not going to get any closer. But I figure I should tell you about—well, I should tell you about this time me and Buck went to this old bar in Brooklyn, yeah? This was when I was still tiny, mind you—” he launches into a story about how he got turned away from the bar and then tried to dress up to get inside in various outfits. He’s mostly on autopilot, keeping watch of Tony’s movements and his breathing, which slowly begins to steady as Steve gets to the part of the story where Bucky pilfers some old asshole’s watch and gives it to him so he can look dignified, and then he has to go chase down the guy and give it back to him.

The story ends and now Steve’s just sitting in silence. For a moment he taps his foot, looks around the room. He thinks that he helped—Tony seems to be a little better—but he doesn’t know whether he should keep talking or try something else. It feels weird to ask Jarvis, when Tony’s right there in the room, but he’s about to anyways. Except Tony finally speaks.

“Thanks,” he says. His voice is shaky and hoarse. “That was—thanks.”

Steve shrugs. “It’s no problem,” he says eventually, when it doesn’t sound like Tony’s going to say anything else. “I used to—in the war, a lot of my buddies would. Well. I don’t know if that’s what’s helpful anymore, but it calmed people down back then okay.”

“No, it’s,” Tony says. Takes a breath. “It’s good. That was good.”

Tony isn’t looking at him. His eyes are downcast, and Steve wishes he could see them, if only to know what Tony is thinking. Not that he ever knows what Tony’s thinking, even when he can see him. But it would be nice to be able to see his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks. Stupid question. He was drugged last night, beat up, and now he’s just had a panic attack. There’s a pretty obvious answer there.

Sure enough, Tony laughs. Or. Does something that’s a cousin of a laugh, except it’s thick with hurt and Steve’s heart clenches.

“I’m good,” he says. “Or—clearly, this isn’t my finest, but overall.”

Steve’s dubious about that, too, but what is he supposed to do if Tony doesn’t want help? He doesn’t want to overstep. Tony’s made it pretty clear that that’s what he’d be doing if he did anything. But he can’t quite bring himself to get up, wave goodbye, and leave Tony sitting here on the floor. So he looks at the floor as if he’s studying it. It’s smooth. Shiny.

“Did the guy ever get his watch back?” Tony asks.

Steve looks up. Tony’s looking at him, and Steve can see his eyes. Dark brown, long lashes. For a moment he can’t even remember the question. “Uh—yeah. Yes. I went back and found him at some upscale restaurant. He wasn’t happy about it. Yelled at me over his lobster bisque.”

“Sounds like you should have kept it,” Tony coughs. Laughs. Shakes his head. “Your friend. Bucky. He sounds like a good guy. He was in the, ah,” he waves his hand, uncrosses his hands from his knees so he’s slightly more relaxed, though he’s still curled around himself like he’d like to hide away as much of himself as possible. “The comics. But he didn’t steal, in those. Mostly just…protected America.”

“The what?” Steve asks.

“Comics. I read them when I was a kid. Obsessively. Actually, I had a—nope. _No,_ ” Tony cuts himself off, suddenly, admonishing, almost. His mouth is clamped shut in a thin line. His eyebrows are raised as if he’s been shocked by what he was about to say.

Steve grins. “What?” he asks.

“You don’t want to hear it,” Tony advises him.

“I really do,” Steve counters. He’s so intrigued. What did Tony have? A fan club? A collector’s set? Steve has signed enough toy soldiers, both back then and now, to know there was all sorts of merch out there, though he’s not seen much of Bucky. Maybe there are Captain America _Legos,_ a toy Tony introduced Steve to recently which he actually loves.

Tony sighs. Shakes his head. “You’re going to hate me,” he groans under his breath. “I had a theory. That you and Bucky were…well. You get the point,” he says.

There’s a tense moment where Tony’s looking at Steve like he’s not sure whether he just tore the Avengers apart or not. Then, Steve starts to laugh.

He hasn’t laughed this hard in a long time. He lets the laugh take over for a minute and then he comes back to reality, wiping his eyes. His chest hurts. “Unfortunately,” he says, shaking off the laugh, “Buck’s straight as a ruler.”

Tony shakes his head in an over-exaggerated sadness, then frowns. “Wait,” he says. He leans forward. “You’re—unfortunately?” he says, cuts himself off halfway through the sentence.

And that’s odd. Because Steve has told Tony. He’s pretty sure of that. He’s…he hasn’t told Tony, has he. “I’m bi,” he says with a shrug. “Men, women, anyone else.” _Tony Stark,_ his brain supplies, and he ignores that thought. He ignores it.

“You’re shitting me,” Tony says.

Steve raises his eyebrows.

“No—sorry. I mean, that’s great. Obviously I’m, you know, supportive,” Tony rushes out. “Would be pretty hypocritical of—whatever. I thought you—” he shakes his head again, cuts himself off.

Steve sends him a look, and Tony frowns again.

“I thought you, y’know. Didn’t like gay people,” he says, finally.

What?

It’s Steve’s turn to frown. “No,” he says. “What made you—did I do something?” Because yeah, sometimes he gets language wrong. He works really hard to change that, though, has read books and blogs on the subject, because the last thing he wants to do is cause harm.

Tony looks as though he’s unsure whether to say something. Shrugs, like _fuck it,_ and says, “Any time I bring up, like, a boyfriend or something. You close off. Get all cold. Guess I figured…” He runs a hand through his hair. “Whatever.” 

Ah, shit. Well, Steve knows why that is, and it’s not because he hates gay people. Quite the opposite. It’s because he likes a _certain_ gay person a little bit too much. So yeah, when Tony has a one-night-stand stay for breakfast, or talks about a guy he thinks is hot on TV, Steve gets awkward. Which he should work on, because he definitely doesn’t want to make Tony uncomfortable. But he’s not about to tell Tony all that, sitting on the floor of his lab, especially not while Tony’s breathing is still off and he was almost assaulted last night.

So, instead, he says, “Oh. Well, uh, you know. Coming from the 1940s and all, it’s just—I’m not used to it, you know. Being able to talk about it.”

Which isn’t exactly a lie. But it doesn’t feel like the truth, either, and the sick feeling lying gives Steve makes him want to get up and pace. Instead he looks back at the linoleum floor. The easy laughter from a moment ago has drained from the room.

Tony nods, knowingly, but leaves it at that.

Steve taps on the ground. One, two. Tony’s looking around the room, tapping on his knee in rhythm. He’s still shaking, somewhat, and looks small.

“Listen—” Steve says, before he can shut himself up. And now Tony is looking at him, so he has to continue. “I just want to make sure that you’re doing alright. I know that last night—”

“Was bad,” Tony finishes. “I know. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got it under control. Genius, remember?” he says, and stands up. Brushes his hands off on his pants and walks over to his computer. “Well, if that’s it, Cap, I’ve got a lot of work to do. Thanks for—for everything,” he says, tossing a look over his shoulder.

And that’s that. Steve lost him. 


	4. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Sending you all love!!
> 
> Warnings for nonconsensual touching in this chapter.

Steve disappears after that.

Or—not disappears. That’s not fair, Tony reasons, a screwdriver tucked under his armpit and a great, lousy hunk of metal in front of him that just won’t cooperate. Steve went on a mission, Fury sent him. And even if he did just disappear, well, he doesn’t owe Tony anything. So, he’s gay. Bi. Whatever. That doesn’t mean he’s into Tony.

He’s a supersoldier. A force of nature. Captain fucking America. Tony is a drunk asshole on the wrong side of forty who’s had two embarrassing breakdowns in front of him in the span of two days. Steve doesn’t owe him anything, and definitely isn’t interested in him.

He crouches down, sorts through the shelves. It’s the wrong screwdriver. He’s completely lost his head. Can’t focus enough to tell a Phillips screwdriver from a Pozidriv, which he could do when he was three.

He’s told himself this about fifty times, now. That Steve doesn’t owe him anything. Steve doesn’t owe him anything, and Steve isn’t _his,_ and he’s not Steve’s to care about or think about or watch over so Steve doesn’t owe him a thing. And still he feels—betrayed. Not betrayed. Maybe betrayed. He feels bad, is what he feels, and it’s a persistent feeling that he is usually able to swat away with schematics and wires and prototypes and can’t, this time.

The door to the lab swings open and someone blond walks in. He almost thinks it’s Steve.

It’s not. It’s Ty, and he grins at Tony.

“Just coming to check on you,” he says, genially.

Ty has come in every day since that meeting. Twice, most days. He gets closer every time. Like he’s a shark. Circling. Waiting. It doesn’t help that Tony’s working on stuff for comms, which takes a long time and is generally uninteresting and Ty is getting _bored._ Moving faster.

Tony tries hard, very hard, to smile back. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep the smile there, one, two, three, four, before he lets it fall again, turns back to his worktable.

“Just working out some k—stuff, you know,” Tony finishes lamely. “In the, um. What I showed you. Yesterday.” God. He can’t speak.

Tony figured if he was good, if he showed Fury he could be good, cooperate, then Fury would call off this—whatever it is. Power play. And then Ty would be gone, and his tech would be safe, and he would be safe, and everything would be fine again. He plotted it out in his head. It would take a month, a month and a half at most. He would go back to Fury, with evidence of improvement. Stupid shit like that.

Except it’s only been a week and a half, now, and Ty is leaning against his worktable, only about a foot from him, under the guise of looking at his work. And Tony can’t—he can’t think, with Ty so close. It’s the _smell_ of him, maybe, all tobacco and that fancy aftershave he uses, and it gets into Tony’s head and he can’t think.

Ty leans over the worktable, looks over at what Tony’s working on.

“Hm,” he says, as if he knows what the fuck he’s looking at, which he doesn’t. Probably.

Tony stares hard at the comms device. He just needs something to think about so that he doesn’t think about Ty. About Ty being so close to him. So, he thinks about the comms device. What it really needs is more power, and it can’t be any bigger, but he can work around that by—

“I thought you were going to route the underneath. So it doesn’t get hooked by other lines, you know, if Fury or someone is—”

“Right. Right.”

“Don’t interrupt me,” Ty says sharply.

“Sorry,” Tony breathes, barely even realizes he’s saying it, because really, he _was_ going to route the underneath. He had to, for it to work right. It was in the designs, it was in his first prototype, and—how had he forgotten that?

He’s lost his head. He just can’t _think,_ is all, and that’s not helpful, he’s not working faster, he’s working _slower,_ and that’s bad. If he doesn’t work faster, Ty will be indefinite. And Ty can’t be indefinite. He needs to be gone, so that Tony can think, so that Tony can _breathe._

He taps his fingers on the counter. They’re shaking, and Ty can see that. Ty can see that his fingers are shaking and that he can’t even, can’t even build a simple comms device, what’s wrong with him—

“Really,” Ty says, and laughs. It’s sharp, and hard. Like he knows he’s won. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Tones.” He reaches over and tucks a finger under Tony’s chin. Puts pressure on it and tilts his head up, so Tony is looking up at Ty. Which—Ty always liked that. That he was small. That he had to look up to meet his eyes.

Tony should do something. Ty shouldn’t be doing this, and Tony should _do_ something, but he can’t. Because then Ty will go running to Fury and Tony will have to tell Fury everything, and he’s not doing that. He’s not. The whole fucking team has access to his record. They’re not reading about his—idiot sixteen-year-old-self. Steve, Steve’s not. No.

Ty smiles down at him. Like a shark. Circling.

“Hard to see why they keep you around, sometimes,” Ty says, shrugs, and drops Tony’s chin, splaying his fingers out on the counter instead, leafing through Tony’s designs, _Tony’s_ designs.

Tony looks away. Back at the comms device. Away.

“Well. I know _one_ good reason to keep you around, but I hardly think Captain America, or Director Fury, would want you for that.” He laughs again, leans over Tony.

Wires. Yellow, blue. Focus, Tony. Ty just—talks. That’s all he does. He talks, and tries to get in your head, but that’s stupid. You’re smarter than he is. Except you just made a stupid fucking mistake on this goddamn machine and now there’s no way to get the power out of it and keep the signals straight.

Tony swallows. Tobacco, aftershave. Ty is leaning over his shoulder, now, right up behind him, looking at the device.

“I see,” Ty says, and frowns. “Try routing this wire around here, that opens up this space, see? That way you don’t run into the insulator problem.” He reaches an arm around Tony to point out where the wire should go, boxing Tony in. He doesn’t move the arm when he’s done talking, puts his other arm on the other side instead, so Tony can’t get out.

Not that he was planning on going anywhere. But now, now he can’t get out. And somehow, it’s different.

Tony focuses on what Ty said. Route the wire around, and then…it works. It works, which is—infuriating. He swallows again. Stares hard at the wires. How did Ty see that and he didn’t? His head, it’s not there. It’s somewhere else, it’s back at sixteen years old and he can’t, he can’t focus. Usually he would catch that. Usually. Right?

“You still think you’re smarter than me,” Ty clucks. “You’re not. You know you’re not, right?” he prods.

Tony doesn’t answer.

“You know, usually people say _thank you._ When someone solves a problem for them.”

Tony stares at the wires for a moment. He doesn’t. He doesn’t say thank you to people who, who he doesn’t like. Who he doesn’t like for reasons. Good reasons. He’s not a pushover, he’s not someone people can just control, can tell to do something and expect him to do it. He’s Tony fucking Stark, for god’s sake. He’s Ironman.

And he can’t route a simple comms device.

“Thanks,” he says. Takes a screwdriver. Unscrews a screw on the left and routes the wire where Ty told him to. It opens up the space.

Ty smiles. Circling, circling, circling.

It takes another week before Ty does anything more.

Well. He does things every day. Talks circles around Tony while Tony just tries to breathe, to think clearly. Makes Tony apologize at least three times, thank him one more. One night, after Ty has left, Tony takes an IQ test Jarvis has prepared for him just to make sure there’s nothing—completely wrong with him. Not that IQ is a good test, at all, but Tony can’t think, can’t do anything, and needs something solid. A number.

“Sir, if I may—” Jarvis starts, after his results come back clean.

“Nope,” Tony replies.

But it takes another week until Ty does something—more.

It’s while he’s putting the finishing touches on the comms device, screwing a metal plate over and all that boring stuff. Ty is in the lab, lounging on Tony’s spinning chair by his computer. Tony is focused on the metal plate and so he doesn’t notice that Ty has moved until he comes right up behind Tony and puts his hand on his waist.

Tony stills.

“Um,” he says. “Could you—” he doesn’t finish that sentence. There’s no point.

“It’s looking good, Tones,” Ty says right into his ear.

It’s just a hand. Just molecules, really, and so is air, so what’s the difference? Nothing. Nothing substantial Tony is completely—unphased. He’s unphased.

He keeps screwing the metal plate in.

After ten minutes—five? thirty?—Ty’s thumb moves under his shirt. Onto his skin. Which is—fine. It’s in the same place, Tony reasons. What’s a layer of cloth. What’s a shirt, anyway. Let’s all be nudists. It would do a lot to combat shame. Or whatever.

It doesn’t matter, Ty’s hand doesn’t fucking matter, because yesterday, he got a report from Fury that Steve, Clint, and Nat were in Paris doing some spy work and their comms had gone down, just a blip while Nat was in the basement of some hideout, but—it shouldn’t have happened. She could have gotten hurt, something could have happened. Tony should have been done with this days ago, and then they would have been using it instead of the older tech and it wouldn’t have happened. So Ty’s hand really doesn’t matter.

Ty moves his other hand on the other side of Tony’s waist, slips his other thumb under Tony’s shirt. He’s right behind Tony, now, and it’s—it’s just double. Two of something is the same as one of something, really. Lots of things come in twos. Chopsticks. Window curtains.

Tony keeps on screwing. How long does it take to screw in a plate of metal, really?

Ty’s hands are holding Tony tighter and it’s—he remembers, now. Some feeling. Some feeling he hasn’t thought about since he was younger.

Like his body isn’t his own. Nothing is his own. There’s no part of his life that can’t be taken. That Ty can’t take.

“You’re cold,” Ty notes.

He’s not. He’s shaking, a little bit, the kind that comes straight from his core. Anxiety. It’s clenching his chest, too, clipping his breath. He doesn’t want to say that, though.

“It’s cold in here,” he decides on, trying to sound nonchalant. Fine. This is fine, Ty can’t get under his skin, can’t mess this up, because Nat and Steve and Clint and all the others are _depending_ on him.

“Jarvis, turn up the heat,” Ty commands and that—that rankles. Ty doesn’t get to command Jarvis. That’s not. No.

Jarvis isn’t pleased, either, Tony knows, but he doesn’t do anything. Three days ago, the first time Ty told Jarvis to do something— _turn up the music, Jarvis_ —the AI did what he does when he’s mad, and turned it up all the way.

Ty got mad. _Can’t even build a half decent AI, Tony, what’s fucking wrong with you,_ etcetera. Tony apologized.

Jarvis learned.

So, the heat comes on slowly.

When Ty leaves, Tony goes to the elevator.

“Take me to my floor, J, thanks,” he says.

The elevator moves upward silently.

“So, what a day, huh? Finished the comms device. Nice, right? I think it turned out pretty good. Next, I had this idea for something for Clint, what would you think about—wait for it—a solid gold bow?”

Jarvis doesn’t answer.

“I know it’s a hard sell, but, honestly, I think he’d be into it,” Tony tries, and his chest is clenching again.

“It doesn’t sound all the most practical, sir,” Jarvis replies. His words are clipped.

Tony looks at his feet. Looks back at the elevator doors. They open into his suite. He drums his fingers on his side. “I can’t—I can’t do this, right now, J. I really need—I can’t do this right now,” he says. Walks to the bathroom. He needs a shower.

“You cannot do what, sir?” Jarvis asks.

Tony turns on the water. “You know. This—this fighting. It’s, you’re my AI. You’re supposed to, you know, help me out. Be on my side.”

“I am on your side, sir,” Jarvis says. “And I am attempting to help you by alerting you to the fact that this is not sustainable. Your heart race is increasing rapidly. Your stress levels are dangerously high. You have had six panic attacks in the past week. I am simply frustrated that you are not allowing me to help.”

“I have a plan,” Tony insists, and gets into the hot water.

He had a plan, didn’t he? Going into this? A plan for how he would deal with Ty, and protect himself, and everything would go back to normal.

He just can’t remember what, exactly, that plan was.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve is in a café in Paris.

He, Clint, and Nat were called on a mission. Steve doesn’t usually do spy work, because he’s terrible at it and also looks like Captain America, but they needed a third and Steve was free. Free-ish. He didn’t want to go. He told Fury as much. But duty calls. And Tony is fine. Tony said he was fine, so he’s fine.

Nat’s currently beside him, drinking an espresso and poking at a crumbling croissant. She has a headscarf on and sunglasses and looks nice, like an aristocrat straight out of a movie. Steve is sitting in the small wire chair next to her. He’s dressed nicely, too, but he hates Paris for its delicate ground and delicate chairs and delicate tables. It makes him feel huge.

Normally, he goes to a museum after their mission is finished, if he has the time. It makes him feel better. The art. But mission is over the day after tomorrow, if everything goes on schedule, and he’s planning on getting right on a plane. He’s been tapping his foot this whole mission, checking his watch, checking his email. Hoping to hear from Tony.

Which is stupid. He and Tony don’t email one another, much less call. Tony has never reached out to him during a mission, and there’s no reason for him to do so now.

Steve is worried anyways.

“What,” Nat says.

Steve blinks. Turns.

“You’re doing the thing again,” she points out, not taking her eyes off of the river in front of them. Really, they’re both watching a woman behind them in the café. That’s their mark. Nat hasn’t looked at her once. Steve turned around an hour ago and Nat almost slapped him for being so obvious. She probably would have done but slapping tends to cause scenes.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Steve replies and looks at the river too. It’s fast today. Yesterday was pouring rain, and so the water is ugly and brown and violent. He likes it better at night, when you can’t see the pollution, only dark water and glittering lights. It’s pretty enough that he wants to paint it, though he won’t. But right now, it’s day, and ugly. He looks slightly down at the wet cobblestones instead. Strangers’ shoes.

“You’re worried about something. Your mind’s somewhere else. What’s going on?” Nat presses.

She asked him this yesterday, too. He brushed her off. But she’s good at reading him and he’s not particularly difficult to read. He’s always had trouble with that, keeping his emotions off of his face. Another reason he makes a terrible spy. What is he supposed to tell her? _I’m thinking about Tony. I’m worried about Tony. Tony, Tony, Tony._ He can’t do that.

He picks the corner off of her croissant and eats it. Swallows. “Just thinking about whether I’m going to get to visit the Louvre this time around,” he says, and even as he says it, he knows she won’t believe it. It’s a beat too late, a beat too easy.

“Terrible lie,” Nat comments, but doesn’t push any more.

Thank god for small mercies.

They sit for a while longer. Twenty minutes. Long enough that he starts tapping his foot on the ground, until Nat steps on his shoe with her own. Long enough that the waitress, a tall, middle-aged woman with her hair tied in a sharp bun, starts to get pushy and Steve orders another espresso just to tide her over. It comes in a ridiculous, tiny cup, and Nat takes pity on him and drinks it.

Before she’s finished, she sets it down on her dish and nods.

Steve stands. Stretches. Their mark is leaving, that’s what the nod means, though he has no idea how Nat knows that when she hasn’t turned around once. It takes all his willpower to stay turned towards the river and not glance backward.

“She’s going North,” she murmurs. “She hasn’t noticed us. We’re on a date. Talk to me. Be cute about it,” she adds, her tone completely flat.

Steve used to be awkward at this stuff. He’s gotten better. Usually, at least, he’s better at this. He’s having trouble coming up with conversation topics. His brain can’t leave Tony alone. “Uh, how was your meeting?” he asks.

“Fine,” Nat says lightly. She’s walking slowly, leisurely. Steve can’t see the mark anywhere in front of them, but he’s sure she knows where they’re going. “My boss is being an idiot.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. Usually, Nat isn’t so quick to criticize Fury. Of course, she could be making that up, for the sake of the conversation, but she told him once she likes to have truthful conversations, when she’s undercover. It makes the rest of the lie flow more easily. And anyways, Fury isn’t listening on the comms. It’s Clint on the other end, holed up in an apartment up North, watching out the window.

“Oh?” he follows up. “Do tell.”

Nat shrugs at him, points out a nice bookshop and says, “Hey, we should go in there later,” all tourist, and then says, “He’s frustrated with our engineer.”

That makes Steve’s heart skip a beat. Tony, Tony, Tony. It’s like Nat read his mind.

“He thinks he’s, mm, difficult to work with,” Nat says. “Which is probably true, but, well…his great plan is to give the engineer outside oversight, which I think is ridiculous.”

Steve frowns. Outside oversight? Tony would hate that. More than that, he would never agree to it. “That is ridiculous,” he says. “Ton—the engineer is great at what he does.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Nat replies. “Obviously, he’s a bit…well. Anyways, I think this is a powerplay that my boss is going to lose. It’ll make him look weak in the end, which will only make his situation worse. Ugh. Anyways.”

Without warning, she pulls a smile on, all flirty, eyelashes. “She’s two streets away. You’re in love with me,” she reminds, because Steve is thinking about Tony, Tony, Tony, instead of mark, Natasha, work, and there’s the mark, two streets away, a flash of short blonde curls.

Steve tries. He’s never been very good at acting. He tucks a strand of hair behind Nat’s ear. Smiles at her. Apparently, it’s enough. Nat smiles again and keeps walking.

“What kind of oversight?” Steve asks. Now that Nat brought up Tony, there isn’t anything else he could possibly talk about. He doesn’t understand how Tony would agree to that. Nat thinks he’s full of himself, which is mostly true, not that his confidence is undeserved. Tony isn’t the type to let anyone boss him around, nor should he be bossed around. Especially not by Fury.

Fury is being an idiot, if this is the whole story. Steve wants to give him a piece of his mind.

“That’s even worse. It’s the tech corporation—Viastone?” Nat says.

Steve shakes his head. He’s never heard of it.

“No, you wouldn’t know it. SI basically wiped it off the map. Led by a CEO I’ve had the pleasure of meeting once or twice.” She says pleasure with a smile, but Steve hears the disgust in her voice. “Tiberius Stone, you ever run into him at a gala?”

Steve thinks. Shakes his head. Something about the name catches in his head, but he brushes it away. He’s met a lot of people. “Might’ve and just don’t remember.” He shrugs.

Someone dashes in front of them.

They both take off at a run, in pursuit, and so the conversation ends there.

Steve, Clint, and Nat reunite at the hotel six hours later.

They’re all staying in one room. The hotel is nice, though, with a good minibar and fancy, boring art on the walls. The lobby has chandeliers. The water pressure is unbelievable. Of course, Clint’s things are strewn all over the room, so that mitigates the luxury. No one but Clint could overpack for a spy mission.

Steve is feeling good. Antsy, still, but the afternoon went well. That means that the next couple of days will be cleanup, and then they can go back home. He feels the Tony-Tony-Tony knot easing in his chest as he sits down on the end of his bed.

Clint sighs, stares at the ceiling. “Seriously, guys, tomorrow I’m going somewhere with croissants. You can’t leave me shut up here forever. I feel like that lady in _Rear Window._ ” He crooks an eyebrow at Steve. “Were you around for that one? It’s old.”

Steve shrugs. He’s never heard of that book, or movie, or whatever Clint is talking about. “If I was, I don’t remember,” he says.

Clint nods and lets his head fall back on the bed.

“Came out in the fifties,” Nat says, not looking up. “So, no.”

She’s doing something on the computer. It looks high-tech and Steve doesn’t want to ask, so he doesn’t. Instead, he digs the croissant he managed to save out of his pocket and tosses it at Clint.

Clint scowls when it hits him square in the forehead, then grins. “Thanks, man. _Feed the birds_ ,” he sings. “ _Tuppence a bag_ …you know that one?”

Mary Poppins. Steve nods. “Tony made me watch it. Said it was a crime that I had never seen Dick Van Dyke.” And then curled up next to Steve on the couch, singing along to the songs, and Steve wanted to kiss him, but he doesn’t add that part. Obviously.

Clint considers this, mouth full, and then makes a sound of approval.

Mentioning Tony reminds Steve of what Nat told him earlier. He hasn’t had a moment to think about it since their conversation, but when he thinks back on it, really. Fury needs to be spoken to, though Steve can’t very well call him up, since he’s probably not supposed to know what’s going on, and he doesn’t want Nat to get into trouble. He still doesn’t understand how Fury got Tony to agree to oversight—he doesn’t even agree to blackmail, for god’s sake. There’s nothing in this world that can convince Tony Stark to do something he doesn’t want to do, and that mollifies Steve a bit. Maybe Tony wants to work with this company. Maybe they have something he needs.

He takes out his phone and googles _Viastone Tech._ From what he can tell, (New York Times and CNN articles, mainly), Nat’s right—it’s not a very good company. Why would Tony want to work with them, then?

Then, he googles _Tiberius Stone._

Tiberius Stone is good looking, in a sort of fake way. All white teeth and carefully done hair. And again, when Steve sees his picture, something about it catches. As if he’s seen him before. But Steve is pretty sure he’s never met the guy. _Tiberius Stone,_ a _Cosmopolitan_ link reads. _Most Eligible Bachelor, or Biggest Failure in Tech?_ Steve clicks on the link.

He scrolls for a while. The guy sounds more like the most eligible asshole to Steve, based on the quotes they’ve dug up from various interviews and appearances. But one catches his eye. It’s by some B-list celebrity, one Steve is pretty sure was in _Game of Thrones._ “I met Ty six years ago at a party,” the quote reads. “He’s really just a big softie, at heart.”

Ty.

That’s where Steve has seen his face before. A blurry photo of a tall blonde guy making out with Tony in a club.

His phone cracks under his thumb.

“Jesus!” Clint says, staring at him. “Dude, are you okay? StarkPhones are indestructible.” He stands, croissant still in his hand.

Steve blinks. Ty—Ty who drugged Tony. Is now his oversight. Fury assigned Tony to be overseen by Ty. “What does outside oversight mean?” he asks. Nat doesn’t look up. “Nat. What does outside oversight mean.” There’s a bead of blood coming from his thumb. The glass must have cut it. It doesn’t matter. It’ll heal in a few seconds.

She swivels around in her chair. Looks at the phone in his hand. Looks up at his face. “Steve, are you okay?” she says cautiously. She takes the phone from his hand and sets it on the table, wary of the broken glass.

“ _What does outside oversight mean,_ ” he repeats, because his stomach is flipping and his knee is twitching, he needs to go, he needs to do something.

Nat frowns. “Meetings, stuff like that? I think he’s working with the CEO on projects so he stays in line. I tried to tell Fury it was stupid, but—”

“I need to go,” Steve says. He walks to the closet, pulls out his bag, and starts shoving clothes in it. Whatever he can reach. Probably some of Clint’s stuff, but it doesn’t matter. “I need to—there’s something I need to do.”

Nat’s hand is on his arm. Light. “Steve,” she says slowly. “We’re in the middle of a mission.”

Steve looks at her. She doesn’t know. She must not know—Fury can’t have done this on purpose, which means he doesn’t know, and so Tony is completely alone. Alone. And Tony hasn’t written him, hasn’t asked for help. This is bad. Tony isn’t safe. He’s alone, with Tiberius Stone, with _Ty._ Steve pulls the zipper closed, growls when it catches on something. Does it up again.

“Clint’s right,” he manages. “We don’t need a guy in the window anymore. He can take my place.” He doesn’t want to leave his team in danger, understaffed, unprepared, but he _knows_ they won’t be. All they have to do is clear out the base, now. Cleanup. He’s never very helpful in cleanup, anyways, it involves a lot of tech stuff that Steve just doesn’t know anything about. Tony needs him. They don’t.

Nat considers this. “That’s true,” she says. “But we’re only here for one more day. Whatever is so urgent can—”

“No, it can’t. It can’t wait.” He looks at Nat. “Will you—you guys will be okay? I can go?”

Nat frowns. Looks at Clint, who nods.

“We’ll be fine, dude. Go.” He looks confused, concerned, but he’s not lying. They’ll be fine.

Steve shoulders his bag and leaves without a glance back.


End file.
